Elizabeth Banks is ready to take chances, make mistakes and get messy on the Magic School Bus.
Banks is attached to star as adventurous teacher Ms. Frizzle in a live-action The Magic School Bus movie, with Legendary getting the rights to make the feature. Rob Letterman will write a treatment and direct, after working with Legendary on Detective Pikachu.
Scholastic, the publisher behind the book series, will produce, along with Banks’ Brownstone Productions, Marc Platt Productions and Legendary.
Banks first flirted with a version of the movie back in 2020, when it was set up at Universal.
Writer Joanna Cole and illustrator Bruce Degen created the books, publishing the first in 1986. The series followed Ms. Frizzle as she took her class on out-of-this-world field trips in her yellow school bus that transformed into whatever they needed that day, be it a space ship or a submarine.
Lily Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle in an animated show that ran for 52 episodes from 1994-97, while Kate McKinnon stepped into star in Netflix’s 2017 series The Magic School Bus Rides Again as the younger sister of Ms. Frizzle. Tomlin also reprised her role for the series, which ran for three seasons and 30 episodes.
Banks is currently on the small screen with The Miniature Wife, which bowed on Peacock in April and also starred in the South by Southwest feature DreamQuil, which hit the fest in March.
As for Letterman, he is already a Scholastic vet after helming the publisher’s 2015 Goosebumps movie that starred Jack Black.
